Hello groupmates!
I was listening to Fr Corapi this morning and he has said some points regarding the use of Catholic words such as 'transubstantiation', 'hypostatic union' , 'consubstantial' etc. He highlighted the importance of such terms. I, at times, have asked myself whether to use them in conversing about the Catholic Faith with other people for I believe that to add these into one's vocabularies is to build bridges that makes it easier for us to know and express our faith. The church, in her wisdom, has defined a perfect term to describe the reality of the Eucharist. There has been fear and even attempts to discourage to use the terminologies used by the church because of thoughts that other people won't understand them.
Did the Church coin these words to create confusion between believers? Fr Corapi pointed out that we have to have a common language that expresses theological and doctrinal realities. In a sense it is the undoing of what happened in Babel where there was disunity because of disintegration of the common language.
On the other hand, we also have to be wary of people changing how the Church defines the words such as use of the same words in a different sense or meaning. This usually happens between the Church and other different ecclesial communities. When discussing with non-Catholics, it is not uncommon to find that they sometimes use the same words with different meanings. In these dialogues, it would be helpful to define our terminologies and avoid to hastily assume that we have common understanding of them.
When speaking to other people who have just come to know the faith or are not very familiar with the terms, yes, we have to use these terms gradually so as not to confuse the people we're talking to. But to forget these terms and permanently avoid them would be a mistake for it is in these terms that the Church have indicated a progress in her understanding of the supernatural revelation and also in them are captured truths that colloquial wordings take pains to define. To familiarize ourselves with them primarily educates us of the articles of Faith contained within the word, also, it allows us to easily relate a body of truth to other truths as exemplified on frequent usage of the terms in Church documents that continually deepen our knowledge of Christ.
May the salvific reality of the Transubstantiation intensify our desire to draw people into the Catholic Church!
Your groupmate,
Eric
-- my heart rejoices in the Lord!
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